JC / Railbird

News Archive

Noted: November 29

– New York racing fans know the passage of seasons by the racing calendar — springs comes with Belmont, fall arrives when Saratoga closes, and winter begins when racing moves to Aqueduct’s inner track, as it does on Wednesday. This year, the inner track will remain open two weeks longer than usual, until March 29, owing to the main track’s inability to handle cold weather. Several races will be affected by the lengthened inner track season, including the Gotham Stakes, run in mid-March. Instead of being a one-turn mile on the main track, it will be a two-turn one and a sixteenth on the inner.
– Horses are shipping into Gulfstream Park in advance of opening day on January 4. Afleet Alex arrived on Monday. Trainer Tim Ritchey is considering the Donn Handicap in February for the dual Classic winner. First Samurai, trained by Frank Brothers, shipped in the same day. The two-year-old will begin prepping for a likely Kentucky Derby campaign at the track.
– What’s next for Todd Pletcher, racing’s first $20 million trainer? “With Pletcher, absolutely nothing is impossible.”
– Hong Kong Jockey Club officials said that one North American invitee to the Hong Kong International Races won’t be starting at Sha Tin on December 11 after testing positive for anabolic steroids. Officials wouldn’t name the horse or its connections. A look at the list of runners announced on November 23 though narrows it down to four (and the flight schedule reveals all). The United States is the only country in which equine steroid use isn’t illegal, although it’s not entirely condoned either.

Posted in News on November 29, 2005

Noted: November 9

– Eclipse voters, listen to trainer Richard Dutrow: Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Silver Train is being sent to Palm Meadows and won’t start again until 2006. Asked if missing the Cigar Mile on November 26 might affect the colt’s chances of being named champion sprinter, Dutrow replied, “He don’t belong getting sprinter of the year.”
– It only took a congressional hearing: Jockeys’ Guild representative Darrell Haire has called for Guild president Wayne Gertmenian to resign. “Gertmenian’s management has been virtually nonexistent for months, and staff has been left hanging out there…. If Gertmenian really cared about the jockeys, he’d step down, but I doubt if he will leave until he’s forced out,” said Haire.
– An unlucky horse turns lucky: Take a Shot was one of the 160 horses caught up in a tornado at Ellis Park on Sunday. He emerged uninjured from the storm to win an allowance race at Churchill Downs Tuesday afternoon. “This horse has had a hard-luck way of going his whole life,” said trainer Shane Warpool. “He went through a fence as a baby in a bad storm. In his last race at Ellis (on Sept. 3) he almost lost his eye. He caught a stone or something on the turf course. So he’s been a bad-luck guy. But this one time the luck worked out for him.”
– Such a nice article, such an unfortunate headline: Shebiscuit.
– Sorceror’s Stone is scheduled for surgery: A bone chip will be removed from the two-year-old’s left ankle. “He came out of [the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile] with just a little change in his left ankle and we X-rayed him and have decided to stop on him and do a little ankle surgery on him,” trainer Patrick Byrne said. “It’s just a little tiny fragment.” After resting for 60 days, Sorceror’s Stone will return to training at Gulfstream Park.
– Beware racing newspapers: “A financial adviser who stole £10million to fund his love of racehorses was jailed for 12 years yesterday. Graham Price even left an IOU for £7million in his bank’s safe. The 58-year-old, known to his loyal customers as ‘Mr Halifax,’ turned from honest businessman to crook after subscribing to a racing newspaper.”

Posted in News on November 9, 2005

Ellis Damaged by Tornado

A deadly tornado swept through parts of Indiana and Kentucky early Sunday, hitting Ellis Park, where it killed three horses, injured a couple of backstretch workers, and damaged the track’s stable area and grandstand. The track was closed, but nearly 160 horses were still on the grounds. Trainer Larry Jones, who arrived on the scene shortly after the storm, told the Courier-Journal that, “It’s wiped out a lot of people’s lives as they know it.” He might have been thinking of trainer Fred Nelson, seen standing outside his flattened barn in this photo.

Posted in News on November 7, 2005

Sunday Notes

Stylish Sultana, in her first start off a nine-week layoff, won the Louise Kimball Stakes for fillies and mares at Suffolk Downs on Saturday by a neck after making a big move coming out of the far turn and splitting horses in mid-stretch. It was her third victory of the year. Stylish Sultana’s last win came in the African Prince Stakes in June.
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Turfway, with its new Polytrack surface, might be the safest racetrack in America: “Comparative entries in the equine ambulance response log show a 100 percent improvement in September over entries for the 2002 and 2004 September meets” (Lexington Herald-Leader). Over the course of the month, only 11 horses had to be vanned off the track, compared to 16 the year previously. None had to be euthanized. More praise for Polytrack: “It’s no overstatement that Polytrack could revolutionize thoroughbred racing” (Courier-Journal).
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Saved from slaughter, a mare makes her second career start at the Meadowlands (Philadelphia Inquirer).

Posted in News on October 9, 2005